Priority Repair Behaviour

posted on January 22nd, 2012, 10:23 pm

When I issue a "Priority Repair" order, a ship will cancel the order if I give it, or the control group it belongs to, a movement order during the time between starting to manoeuvre into the repair queue and actually entering the yard. This I find bad as it often leads to ships unintentionally leaving the queue and being killed.

I do not know if this behaviour is bugged or by design, which is why I'm posting it here rather than in the "Ideas and Feature Requests" forum. If it's by design, then I suggest that it is an example of "bad micro"; ie, forcing players to work around poor behaviour, rather than allowing players to try and get the best from their ships; and as a consequence should be changed.

For me, ideally, a ship on "Priority Repair" would only be pulled from the queue after the issuing of another "Priority Repair" order or an "All Stop" order.

I can reliably reproduce this, if it is a bug, and I'll be happy to provide a savegame where it happens.

posted on January 22nd, 2012, 10:36 pm

It's a bug, people have been getting it for a while. I'm certain it's carried over from stock.

posted on January 23rd, 2012, 12:01 am

Just tested it in stock ... and it does happen. Never noticed that before; probably because I'm now playing with a more mobile style.

posted on January 23rd, 2012, 12:34 am

Yes, the Craft AI system for Armada II is very poorly coded and is quite difficult to change because it is tied in with most other aspects of ship behavior I'm afraid .

Unfortunately, although a few attempts have been made to fix this system, only small progress has been made overall for following patches. We have some ideas, but it takes a lot of time to effectively test changes, as - for instance - the priority repair is so tied into other craft behavior.

posted on January 23rd, 2012, 4:00 am

Sounds like Armada II developers were not much into modularity.

posted on January 23rd, 2012, 4:15 am

I think the original developers were probably more into what mostly worked in order to make the ship date.